Just thought I'd share this story about today with you guys
Hannibal, My Savannah Monitor made his first real escape today. (other than a slight fiasco when I took him on the front lawn on a hot day). This all happened because of my girlfriends cat MaryJane, who likes to sharpen her claws on screens. She doesn't scratch on the screen door upstairs anymore, because she knows she'll get yelled at.
So she sneaks downstairs and scratches on the screen on top of Hannibals tank. (New enclosure coming NEXT WEEK, I'll post pics). I know she's afraid of Hannibal, because he got a hold of her on other time. But she sits in his basking light with him, and gets her claws going on the screen. Neading(sp) I think its called?
Anyway, she worked a slight hole in the screen. And the other day while feeding Hannibal, I was holding the mouse about 2 feet above the tank, slowly bringing it down to feed him. He smelled it and actually jumped right up, front claws latching on to the top of the aquarium and doing a sort of a chin up. That's when he KNEW he was big enough to get out now.
So today he worked at that small hole in the screen until it was a GAPING hole, and actually piled his substrate at 1 corner, moved his basking rock over top of it, and then overturn his water dish and put that over the rock, and made his way to freedom.
It took 5 of us about 35 minutes to find him, as we were looking in all the TIGHT spots, because I figured he'd go where he COULD NOT be touched. But I found him under the basement couch eventually, eating a spider.
Haha great story, glad you found him though! 
